Lord Emsworth Sun Dec 31 20:46:50 2000
The Weirdness of Toonbots
> I just read through my own archives just now. ... Toonbots is really
> weird, isn't it?
Of course! However, to properly appreciate it, I think you have to go through the archives and read it from the beginning. It's interesting to watch the progression from panels to captions to dots to bounding boxes to eerie disembodied heads. Really, if the average individual happened to see the Dec. 29 strip without glancing at the previous strips, he (or she) would probably be confused (more than we are, that is) and probably find it even weirder (at least by going through the Toonbot archives, the sight of Mao Tse-Tung shouting "Hey Fred!" seems slightly logical, in the typically unorthadox Toonbots manner. And the blurb would be even more confusing, unless you'd been following the strip and blurbs from the beginning.
Toonbots is certainly the strangest strip in my regular reading list, probably the strangest comic I've ever read in my life, on the web or in print. Still, while some have been stranger than others, for the most part, I enjoy the weirdness, and the fact that I really have no idea at all what to expect. What new features might be added to the Toon-o-Matic? Will such and such be features in a subsequent installment (most of the characters and gimmick introduced thus far have)? Will we ever uncover the true nature of the Dot? Lately, even the panel layouts have been interesting and unexpected. The strip has run the gamut from political humor to surrealism to Seussian rhymes to interesting character studies, to... well, just plain weird stuff!
In closing, keep up the good work, Michael! While I sometimes find it difficult to rationalize why, I like the weirdness and the sense of the unexpected. After all, we don't even know when the next Toonbot will show up!
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